a. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a system for implementing a procedure for the diagnosis or treatment of tissue in a body. In particular, the instant invention relates to a system that permits more effective planning and implementation of medical procedures employing catheters.
b. Background Art
Catheters are used in numerous procedures for the diagnosis and/or treatment of tissues in the body. A variety of catheters may be used, for example, in the treatment of cardiac arrhythmias (including, but not limited to, atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, atrial tachycardia, and ventricular tachycardia). Arrhythmia can create a variety of dangerous conditions including irregular heart rates, loss of synchronous atrioventricular contractions and stasis of blood flow, which can lead to a variety of ailments and even death. It is believed that the primary cause of many arrhythmias is stray electrical signals within one or more heart chambers. An ablation catheter imparts ablative energy (e.g., radiofrequency energy, light energy, ultrasound, or thermal (cryo or heat based) energy) to the heart tissue to create a lesion in the heart tissue. This lesion disrupts undesirable electrical pathways and thereby limits or prevents stray electrical signals that lead to arrhythmias. In addition to ablation catheters, electrophysiology (EP) catheters may be used to detect and map electrical activity in the heart while other catheters may be used to image cardiac tissue including intracardiac echocardiography (ICE) catheters.
When implementing procedures involving the use of catheters, it is desirable to minimize the time required for the procedure. Minimizing the time required for the procedure reduces risks to the patient from prolonged exposure to anesthesia and the presence of foreign objects within the body. Minimizing the time required for the procedure also reduces resource costs for health care providers and improves patient access to health care. Accordingly, medical procedures involving catheters are carefully planned to limit the time required and increase the effectiveness of the procedure.
Despite careful planning, the vagaries of patient anatomies and responses to external stimuli frequently create unexpected results. For example, a clinician may plan and/or attempt to implement a procedure by configuring a catheter in a certain way at a target location only to learn after arriving at the location that the patient's anatomy and/or limitations associated with the catheter prevent such a configuration. Further, the ability to optimally plan the procedure is often limited in conventional systems. In particular, it is often difficult to determine an optimal order for visiting multiple target locations for diagnosis and treatment. As a result, clinicians often default to a plan that involves moving the shortest distance among target locations. This order may not be optimized for achieving the desired diagnosis or treatment, however, resulting in unnecessarily prolonging procedures and, in the case of cardiac ablation, unnecessary lesions in the heart tissue.
The inventor herein has recognized a need for a system for implementing a procedure for the diagnosis or treatment of tissue in a body that will minimize and/or eliminate one or more of the above-identified deficiencies.